


Life together

by 2Xlater



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26007685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2Xlater/pseuds/2Xlater
Summary: -	You are part of my plan. To be more precise, you are my plan itself, and my goal, my destiny. The older myself sent me for you. At first I was just blindly led by him and Adam. But everything has changed. Everything has become of a different sense now and all these words they told me… the people from the future. You see, it is completely different for me. It is not just a coincidence or a chance meeting. It is more than just feeling…
Relationships: Elisabeth Doppler/Noah | Hanno Tauber
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	Life together

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Жизнь вдвоем](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/669661) by punxler. 



> So this is my first fic in Dark fandom. Actually this is a translated version of my fic in Russian. I am sorry for the mistakes you can find because, you see, my English is not very good. Anyway, I want to share it with foreighner readers . If it is too bad, let me know and I will delete it, or I will correct my mistakes. I have been suffering because of these two so long and so badly. I have two more fics in Russian, although I am not sure I will translate them. And I also have several fanarts. Well, enjoy it!

It had been a long time enough for Hanno to get used to her presence in the cave. Meanwhile, Elizabeth still was wary of everywhere her following stranger. She couldn’t be completely confident in anything in this unpredictable world after the accident in the caravan. Why are people so cruel? With deep scars and imprints of inevitable future, she had yet to find the answers. And now...

 _"I am going to look for some food"_ , Hanno started to sign, _"you stay here."_ His straight confident look he gave her that time in the Kahnwalds’ house again.

 _"I will go with you."_ Elizabeth quickly got up from the ground and gave him that doe-like stare Franziska hated her for.

 _"No, me only."_ His movements were calm, he hoped that he signed right so that she could understand his thoughts exactly.

He didn’t want to play child’s game right now. He took the flash light and turned to leave the cave. However, on the halfway to the exit he noticed his old dark cloak and blond strands energetically moving to the sides in an attempt to catch up his shadow. The girl with the earnest air followed him in the long corridor of the cave. He kept silent. Great. But not great enough to make a face or to make a scene. Now Hanno had to keep an eye on her though it would be difficult as he had to concentrate on scavenging for both of them. One of his main goal for now, as Noah said, was to take care of this fragile nymph. His mother told him tales about these beautiful magical creatures, and he came to the conclusion that they might look exactly like her. And he had been doing quite a good job. But the question _“Why”_ stuck in his head. He saw how Elizabeth was important to Noah. Hanno also saw love and knew what it was in general terms. He saw it in his mother’s eyes when she looked at him after his mischief. He also saw it in his father’s eyes when he came home late at nights and found Silja sleeping with him-baby on the sofa. But is he the one who will love some day? He, who killed his father because he was said to do it? Will he be able to love? While they were going outside, Hanno was thinking that love makes wonderful things with people. He remembered that Noah, as if he had a button, switched these two of his essences (or there were more of them?). Cold blooded and detached murderer with others and careful and gentle man when talking about her… What happened to him? Why he wasn’t with her, Hanno wondered. 

_"You are pretty slow, you know?"_ He could barely see the direction of her gestures - so quickly she was moving her hands. _“Is she grinning?"_ Hanno also smirked. _"She probably wants to show me that she is capable of caring of herself. Nah.”_

* * *

More than a year passed. Hanno was still calm and cool, but he also was caring sometimes, maybe too caring. Anyway, it was all about relationships between sister and brother (or father and daughter? Friends?) as Elizabeth considered them. Yet it was far different from how they got along with Franziska. The girl even unconsciously didn’t want to acknowledge that she liked to have elder brother more than elder sister. And what did she feel? She grew really fast and Hanno couldn’t but noticed these changes in the girl. However, unlike his heart, her was a heart of a little naïve girl and it was bright, warm and flexible. It once believed in princes before all this apocalyptic shit. She fell for him so badly. The reflections of the most powerful and eternal first love could be seen in her feelings. She didn’t understand her feelings, so she was afraid of them. She was strongly sure she would never admit it to him. Who was she for him and who was he for her in this world? He was so mature, serious and always determined about his plans in mind. Sometimes she believed that he came as an alien from a different planet or a world. Elizabeth was ashamed even of the thought of her confession. She blushed as she imagined if she would write these words on a piece of paper for him, and he in his turn would look at her with the expression like _“Really?”_ and then burst out laughing with somewhat cruelty not kindness. And Elizabeth after that would wake up screaming over his laughter every night. She was ready to burn of the shame only when this thought appeared in her mind. _No way._

Meanwhile, Hanno had no clues of her condition as he was more concerned about other important things. The image of Jonas hanging there in the attic was still in his head. Sometimes the boy noticed when she acted weird. She looked away if he suddenly caught her at the way she was staring at him. The girl was actually fond of watching him — all she could afford. Her eyes were too expressive, all was always written in them, so she usually did it on the sly.

She kept track of time. Not like before with calendars and red circles which was her favourite activity in the previous life. Peter helped her to make circles with a marker when something important for their family was apt to happen. Now she counted years and months, which had passed since the day she lost everything in her life but found something else that wasn’t fully available for her.

She had been keeping her feelings closed deeply in her heart for years. With days passing by they only grew and it sometimes seemed there wouldn’t be enough room for them, and like milk poured out that time when she wanted to make cacao for her sister as a piece of offering, her love would come out.

It almost happened one day. It was one of the best moments of her life. The winter when she was fourteen was abnormally cold. Those who had survived could bet that these were the consequences of the explosion of the nuclear power plant. They didn’t have much warm clothes and the fire wasn’t warm enough for them to feel good. The cold penetrated their bones though they were sitting in front of the weak flame on the old blanket which had been their bed for several years. Hanno saw her body shake and the picture of that made him freeze even more. He thought that the sound of her teeth chattering throughout the empty cave would drive him crazy.

 _"Come here",_ he signed, when their eyes finally met. Elizabeth couldn’t understand what he wanted. She quietly got up and took a few steps until she was close to him, looking down in expectations at his pale face. The boy was sitting leaning against the big stone with his legs bent and arms resting on the knees. He moved legs aside a little and opened the arms as in an inviting gesture. Elizabeth’s eyes widened. She was puzzled.

_"Sit down here."_

Something hit the left part of her chest. 

_"What are you waiting for? "_ His brows rose.

Another hit.

She sat between his legs and carefully snuggled against Hanno’s warm chest. He covered them with another blanket and before closing his eyes looked down at the fair top of Elizabeth’s head who also raised her head. The boy gave her a weak smile. At least he didn’t hear that awful shattering. At the same time, the girl was praying to all the Gods he wouldn’t hear another sound. Her heart was beating too hard, fast and loud. He was still blind to changes in her attitude. He even began to doubt the words of his other self. Sometimes everything seemed awfully silly. Hanno was almost twice her age, and what could come of it heavens know. The boy didn’t really believe before he came to the future, but to follow blindly someone’s plans was like being a puppet. The puppeteer was not around now, and he didn't really want to be manipulated any more.

He was too tired to think about it. The one thing he had time to think about before falling asleep was the fact that they needed to move out of the cave. Perhaps they could find a home.

* * *

In her seventeen he continued (this time being led by his will not by the plan of Sic Mundus) taking care of Elizabeth, although he couldn’t help noticing the great deal of changes in her. She had become so grown-up, strengthen by the life in the hell, and even more resilient than him. She was bound to become such a person. He sometimes remembered the story of her loss. What she did back then when her father died. All those years she had been worrying about that man’s death responsibility for which fell on her shoulders. He decided to open up and tell her about Bartosz then. Besides, she had become so beautiful. Hanno had never seen girls like her even if he only remembered prostitutes in the tavern and his mother’s face. However, the most terrible thing about her becoming a woman was the fact that she could take care of herself. He was afraid for some reason of being useless for her, that she no longer needed him. The boy couldn’t realize that the moment she wanted to abandon him had no chance to happen because she would never want it even if everything in Winden at last got right as it were before (And was anything right in Winden before and was before there?). The threads of his fate had tightly intertwined in the most complicated and intricate pattern with her ones.

Now she watched him without hiding. The girl even wanted him to notice her because she enjoyed his confused and embarrassed look. As if there was a nest on his head, of which she only was aware, and he did everything all the way without knowing it like a fool. But the look he gave her had changed slightly through the years. There was everything so familiar in it but with more warm, care and even sadness. As a woman, she had an edge over him, and he as a man failed each time in an attempt of trying to understand a woman mind.

There was something peculiar in watching him as he worked physically. His veins were pulsing, his muscles were strong and tensed and the forehead was in mud mixed with his sweat. 

_"Why are you staring at me?"_ Hanno put the axe down and wiped the sweat from his face with the towel.

 _"I just like it."_ Through the time, she felt the strongest necessity to take on her mother’s old hobby. Now she was drawing the fine lines of his strand of hair. Even chatting with signs, they never broke their eye contact. It was vital for both of them. 

_"What can be interesting in my chopping wood? If I don’t prepare everything in advance, we will be dying of cold like that time in the cave."_

Hanno didn’t know what he expected to see in a response, but he wanted to see it badly.

 _"You. I like you."_ She replied with distinguishable and slow signs.

It was so easy. By her seventeen all her silly childish fear had gone. Being self-confident and mostly independent, she wasn’t afraid of showing these words. And she knew it perfectly well that he wouldn’t laugh at her and there would be no nightmares. Anything but this, Hanno couldn’t predict. He somehow sheepishly smiled, unconsciously looked around and turned to the axe as if it was his life raft in the middle of the ocean full of sharks. He didn’t have a habit of getting nervous. None the more he had a habit of getting nervous because of her.

 _"I have no time to dawdle."_ He went on working.

Elizabeth smiled. That night they slept together for the first time not counting that cold night in the cave.

* * *

So more time passed and nothing changed between them. Only they knew that they cared of each other but with some more sense that could be find in it. Still, it hadn’t changed their routine they never stopped maintaining for each other. Sometimes his eyes couldn’t leave her eyes making their contacts special and making somebody near them, especially Jonas, feel awkward. They touched each other’s hands and fell asleep together. Elizabeth started to think that she had never been and would never be that happy and calm, as she was those days and Hanno without telling her felt the same. However, it was quite a novelty for him because he never had childhood as the girl had. The life could have taken a different path if his mother hadn’t died when he was only six. This feeling was strange and frightening but at the same time, it gave him an endless power to keep on going further.

It was unexpectedly hot one midsummer day. The incredibly bright light of the sunbeam awakened Ellie so she was up quite early. It was dancing on her face shining through the dirty curtains of their new old home. She at once decided that she wanted this day to be special. _She_ wanted to make it special.

When Hanno woke up, everything was ready. 

_"Get yourself ready, we are going to the lake"_ , she started to sign sitting next to the boy while he was still half-asleep. 

_"Why? What for? "_ That confused look which he often gave her since she began to change. 

_"A picnic, we are going on a picnic."_

Hanno didn’t understand that either but didn’t want to argue. Let her have fun whatever she came up with.

They came to the lake. _That lake._ It wasn’t that special for them of course. Yet it wasn’t.

The lake seemed to have saved a power to attract all the lovers of Winden even after the apocalypse. There L _ove_ lived. And there _Death_ rested.

The couple didn’t have much to eat. All they brought were just two sandwiches, a little apple, peanuts and water – something that could hardly be found these days. An awful nostalgia of the past when her family went camping and swimming together suddenly covered Elizabeth.

 _"Go for a swim?"_ She asked.

 _"Nah, don’t feel like."_ Hanno just could not find this entertainment exciting.

_"Okay, I will go alone."_

She was wearing a light white summer dress without bra under it, although her body already let her. Elisabeth just didn’t see any sense in wearing bras. Why was her sister so enthusiastic when time for asking mother for the first bra came? Anyway, in the world they lived nobody should care about other’s bodies and appearance, she thought. She quickly put off the fabric. Hanno who was in a quite weird condition expected the least such a thing from her when he saw her naked with her blondie hair which covered the soft skin of her back. He choked silently and stood still in a silent amazement, which the girl couldn’t see but could feel. She dived in murky water _letting be covered with it like with the blanket. She imagined that she was a mermaid._

 _"The water is warm!"_ Her gestures were wide and clear for Hanno to see them.

She need not try so hard as he understood it clearly, but he was too shocked and deep in himself thinking about something, perhaps about today’s events and Elizabeth’s logic which made her act in such a fashion.

At last, he wanted to join her. The boy took off his clothes, which he had brought from the past. He wanted to wear it today because it became Elizabeth’s dress so perfectly. Approaching slowly the girl, he let his body adjust the water. It was so cold.

 _"Can you swim?"_ Elizabeth asked when water reached his shoulders.

_"I can."_

_"Let’s find out who is faster? To the centre of the lake?"_ She deduced enthusiastically.

 _"What games, Elizabeth? No way."_ Hanno’s look was severe.

 _"But I am good at swimming! We used to have swimming classes at school"_ , the girl with all her sincerity couldn’t understand what made him so serious.

_"Still I object to."_

_"Are you afraid of losing?"_ It was her old method of manipulating people. 

_"Nice try, but won’t work… You know I don’t worry about myself."_

Each time he spoke words like these, she felt if she was a little girl in the caravan 6 years back then. The girl who was the object of someone’s filthy physical desire. She couldn’t but feel it being next to him. It also made her mad and irritated. She felt like punching his chest to give a way to her anger.

Hanno managed to see her through. Her brow ridges making one line indicated that she was about to burst into a continuous steam of speech of a rebellious teenager.

_"Stop it! Stop act like I am a useless little pain in your ass! I have grown up both physically and psychologically. I want and I can be my own support… and support for you too. I am not weak and helpless, but what makes me mad more is what you can perfectly get it and still don’t give me any chance! You seem to have an important big plan somewhere in your mind and you follow it, but I also want to be a part of this. Not like the millstone on your neck, but like… like a big hot air balloon which takes you higher."_

The metaphor she used made all her thoughts she wanted to share vanish at once because its meaning was unlikely to be understood by him. _“What the hell is the balloon she is talking about?”,_ Hanno thought.

It was needless for her to say all these words because he understood everything clearly. The problem was that he was afraid of acknowledging it to her. Suddenly there was recollection of Noah’s eyes in his mind. In his gaze when he talked about Elizabeth Hanno could see how important she was to him, how desperately he cared of her. Six years ago Hanno couldn’t realize Why, but now his mind was open to realization and was open to see that in the future he would have the same look when he would talk about her.

_"You are part of my plan. To be more precise, you are my plan itself, and my goal, my destiny. The older myself sent me for you. At first I was just blindly led by him and Adam. But everything has changed. Everything has become of a different sense now and all these words they told me… the people from the future. You see, it is completely different for me. It is not just a coincidence or a chance meeting. It is more than just feeling…"_

It was obvious to her that there was something more than _them._ She started to suspect long ago. You can’t be sure when you live in the world like this. Hanno, their first meeting in the bunker, her father death – all these had never been an accident. But his words and his confiding in her made Elizabeth feel the strongest caresses to the boy. It was seen as always by the expression of her face.

She came closer, reached out her hand and touched his cheek. It was a sparkle in his eyes as if he was about to cry which would be the first time after killing his father.

 _"Your lips are blue."_ This time he extended the hand to take her chin gently and draw his fingertip over her lower lip.

 _“He never makes a first step”_. So she decided to take charge. Her lips touched his in a gentle and careful kiss. Hanno tried to throw away the thought of her naked body touching his chest under the water. It seemed so wrong but desired at the same time. Like the Apple of Eden. Like Martha and Jonas’s connection. But it was about them and always would be. He was the first to break a special moment. 

_"I am going to the shore. Turn away, please",_ she signed.

The couple went back to the shore letting their minds rest a little. Elizabeth laid on her side resting her head on the left hand, and looked at the blanket pattern. It was quite similar to their old grandfather Tannhaus’s blanket. Hanno was sitting cross-legged and looking at her. The girl raised her crystal blue eyes and there were their eye contact again.

 _"I love you."_ It was one hand enough for her to show this to him.

It was one gesture enough for him to understand everything. His mother used to show these gestures.

 _"I love you."_ Like a reflection in the mirror Hanno copied her movements.


End file.
